FROM THE MAGAZINE

Planet Yoga

With more than 16 million Americans practicing their Sun Salutations (or collapsing thankfully into Corpse Pose), yoga is a bona fide, coast-to-coast craze. Michael O'Neill journeyed around the globe to photograph its apostles, popularizers, and personalities.

When both your best friend from college in Ohio and your husband’s old classmate in California have left their professions to teach it; when your daughter’s Manhattan-private-school curriculum now requires it, along with Latin and lacrosse; when the Philadelphia lawyer you’re sitting next to at a political fund-raiser is taking off for the same Costa Rican retreat from which your hairdresser has just returned—and you yourself have finally succumbed because the former navy serviceman with whom you’ve been training for the past 10 years has ditched Cybex for Anusara—then you know you’re eyeball-deep in a Zeitgeist-defining, coast-to-coast cultural phenomenon.

If doing your daily Downward Dog has not yet become as American a way of life as, say, NASCAR racing, it may be just a matter of time. Already in the U.S., nearly three times as many people practice yoga than Judaism (about 16.5 million versus 6 million, presumably with some overlap), and Yoga Journal polls indicate this number could snowball to as much as 25 million within the next year. Curiously, three-quarters of these devotees—like Madonna, Uma, Christy, Gwyneth, Ali, and Prunella’s mom in the cartoon show Arthur—are women. Not only are the yoga demographics enormous, but the dollars are too. Approximately $20 billion a year is spent on yoga paraphernalia—from Gucci’s sticky mats to Wal-Mart’s do-it-yourself DVDs. Yogis of certain persuasions (there are multiple sects) see no contradiction between the spiritual aims of their discipline and the worldly symphony of ringing registers. Yogi Bhajan, the late disseminator of Kundalini yoga, which emphasizes meditation, helped launch 17 businesses—sacred cash cows that included a billion-dollar-a-year security-guard firm, manned by his followers. Apostate “hot yoga” inventor Bikram Choudhury—reviled by purists for his quick-fix approach—tools around Beverly Hills in a white Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Observes John Friend, founder of the burgeoning, “heart-opening ” Anusara branch of yoga, “I strongly believe that all the downsides of commercialization …are far outweighed by the potential for millions of people to realize their divine nature.” Even the 2,500-year-old Bhagavad Gita, one of the first scriptures devoted to yoga, opens with Hindu avatar Krishna urging the reluctant Prince Arjuna onto the battlefield to seize back his kingdom.

Maybe because it’s compatible with the national propensity for puritanical asceticism, transcendentalist mysticism, muscular Christianity, and evangelical faith healing, yoga has had a firm U.S. toehold since at least the turn of the 19th century. In 1893, when young Swami Vivekananda made a pilgrimage from Bombay to Chicago to spread the message to the World’s Parliament of Religions, he found himself preaching to the choir. Cole Porter and Noël Coward composed lyrics celebrating taste-maker Elsie de Wolfe’s topsy-turvy yoga-style athleticism. (Coward: “‘A,’ it’s a question of being sincere / And ‘B,’ if you’re supple you’ve nothing to fear.”) And wasn’t that a swami making the rounds at Auntie Mame’s Beekman Place cocktail party, along with the Freudian psychoanalyst and the Lithuanian bishop? President Woodrow Wilson’s daughter Margaret fled New York for a Pondicherry, India, ashram; fitness theorist Joseph Pilates and modern-dance pioneer Martha Graham absorbed yoga routines into their movement techniques; Columbia University’s spring 1940 catalogue offered a P.E. course featuring “India’s mysterious Yoga disciplines”; while Time magazine, in 1937, hailed yoga’s ability to strengthen “weak sex glands ” and irrigate the colon, by “contraction and relaxation of the sphincters.”

Hollywood, the Beatniks, the Beatles, and the half-million flower children of Woodstock experimented with yoga, too, albeit as much for its capacity to expand minds as tone bodies. In the 70s, PBS aired the uplifting Lilias! Yoga and You program three times a week, demystifying the lotus position in much the same way as it had mainstreamed Julia Child’s French cooking. These bohemians and their fellow travelers might have been surprised to learn that most of the familiar poses (asanas) of the yoga repertoire date back only 120 years—not to exotic Eastern precedents, but to the calisthenics of British-colonial gymnasts, wrestlers, and martial artists.

None of which is to say that hatha yoga—the physical practice centered on postures and breathing—does not have proven therapeutic value, which for some individuals borders on the miraculous. After surgery to eliminate bone deposits from his neck, photographer Michael O’Neill could no longer move his right arm. Practicing Kundalini yoga for four years gradually “helped build up my strength and reconstruct my nerves,” says O’Neill, whose arm is now fully mobile. “Yoga changed me spiritually too, in terms of grace and of attitude.” How is this scientifically possible? Neurologist Dr. Patrick Stubgen, of New York—Presbyterian Hospital, suggests that yoga can promote well-being by facilitating the draining of the lymphatic system, and by stimulating the brain’s endorphin and serotonin production. For B. K. S. Iyengar, creator of the eponymous, alignment-focused, holistic healing method, it is a question of “even distribution of bioenergy, or the life force.”

To pay homage to the discipline that helped restore him, O’Neill spent a year photographing yoga’s revered masters, at locations as close to home as Manhattan’s Hudson Street and as remote as Lake Mansarovar, near Mount Kailash, in western Tibet—“the holiest spot on the planet,” O’Neill says. Among his subjects are the three eminent apostles—Iyengar, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, and TKV Desikachar—of venerated guru Krishnamacharya, to whom the early-20th-century revival and modernization of yoga can be directly traced.

If fighting off swarms of mosquitoes, trekking over 100,000 miles, and courting financial catastrophe in the name of yoga, as O’Neill did, seems inhibitingly extreme, moderation is also acceptable. As Krishna counsels Prince Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, “Even a little of this practice will shelter you from great sorrow.”

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

B. K. S. IyengarThe grand master of yoga.

Iyengar /i’jEXgA:/ noun ... a type of hatha yoga focusing on the correct alignment of the body, making use of straps, wooden blocks, and other objects as aids to achieving the correct postures.

—Oxford Dictionary of English

B. K. S. (Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja) Iyengar, 88, is the father of the yoga which bears his name. From his Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute (named for his late wife), in Pune, India, he presides as the unofficial pope of the yoga world. More than anyone else, he is responsible for making the complex asanas—or poses—accessible to people all over the planet. If you have a yoga block or a strap, thank Iyengar; he was the first to use them. The original treatise on Ashtanga, or “eight-limbed yoga,” from the fifth century B.C., consisted of 196 aphorisms not easily comprehended by non-gurus. Iyengar’s renown is as the great popular translator of the yoga movements. It is his system of instruction, which almost everyone can understand, that has made the Global Yogalution possible. Before Iyengar, yoga was largely passed down from master to student. Now, thanks to him, it is taught in Indian public classes and schools.

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

John FriendCreator of the Anusara technique.

If America has adopted yoga, perhaps no other teacher has personalized it—Americanized it—more than John Friend. A big, gentle Texan who ditched a career in finance to teach yoga full-time, Friend studied with B. K. S. Iyengar and in 1997 developed his own brand of hatha yoga he dubbed Anusara (“flowing with grace”)—a practice that emphasizes “openheartedness” and “loving kindness.” Anusara aims to free up the emotions by aligning the body in various poses, and often resembles a form of dance more than exercise or meditation. In the process, Friend has become something of a phenomenon: a beloved cult figure to thousands of followers, presiding over classes awash equally in sweat, laughter, and tears. “It’s not like ‘Put your arm over your head and breathe five times,’” Friend has said. “It’s more feeling-oriented.” If that sounds just a little New Agey, it’s also made Friend—a cuddly, laughing Buddha of sorts, and clearly a gifted teacher—extremely successful. And, in that sense, he is even more American than most: equal parts guru and therapist, maverick and marketeer.

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

Shiva ReaLady of the Dance.

Shiva Nataraja is the Hindu Lord of Dance. Shiva Rea is the Madonna of the yoga world—that is if you don’t count Madonna as the Madonna of the yoga world. Born in 1967, in Hermosa Beach, California, Rea was named Shiva by her surfer father, who had never done yoga, but, being an artist, loved the image of Shiva Nataraja. Learning about her name at a young age, she read that “Shiva is not just the Lord of the Dance but the first teacher of yoga,” and, at 14, began practicing yoga from a book she found in the library. Rea is the best-known instructor of Vinyasa flow yoga, an energetic, full-spectrum approach she cultivated from her years of experience that uses balanced, fluid sequences (vinyasas) to help empower her students to experience prana (the universal source of breath, life-energy, and conscious intelligence). She is famous for the “Yoga Trance Dance,” which she calls an “exploration of the eternal flow of natural movement through yoga.” Rea has sold numerous DVDs worldwide and developed a following that includes Alanis Morissette, Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Pierce Brosnan, and Danny DeVito. In addition to being on the faculty of the U.C.L.A. World Arts and Cultures Program, she tours the globe, visiting up to 35 countries a year (portable stove in tow, to cook macrobiotic meals), spreading the gospel of what she calls “yoga as a conscious revolution,” and is the catalyst for this fall’s Global Mala Project, uniting the yoga world to support the U.N.’s International Day of Peace.

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

David Life and Sharon GannonFounding owners, Jivamukti Yoga Schools; a bridge between the East and the West.

Just when did yoga become cool? Probably not long after David Life and Sharon Gannon, two former art-world hipsters, opened their first Jivamukti Yoga School, in New York’s East Village more than 22 years ago. As yoga caught on and word spread, their studio became jam-packed with the likes of Sting, Russell Simmons, Madonna, Uma Thurman, and a legion of crunchy, tattooed acolytes. The music was thumping—a funky, lounge-like mix of everything from the Beatles to Moby—and Jivamukti’s mission kept growing. Life and Gannon, who both studied with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, preached the liberation of body and soul, and their holistic vision extended to strict vegetarianism and hard-core animal-rights activism. (Both were vanguard members of PETA, and Gannon is also the author of Cats and Dogs Are People Too.) These two downtown pioneers, like the impresarios of the old vaudeville theaters that once lined East Village streets, are consummate showmen as well as shamans, injecting yoga with a healthy dose of New York chutzpah along the way.

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

Gurmukh Kaur KhalsaQueen of Kundalini.

Kundalini is a rigorous yoga involving meditation, chanting, and breath exercises which harmonize the body’s energy centers, or chakras, and tune the nervous and glandular systems. It is also a lifestyle for Sikhs around the world—a science of the mind and body, which its proponents say cures illnesses and drives its practitioners toward spiritual oneness with God. The glamour girl of Kundalini is Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, an erstwhile flower child and veteran of love-ins, whose Golden Bridge Yoga center in Los Angeles is the hub of her empire; a second branch recently opened in Manhattan. Many Hollywood figures (Courtney Love, Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams) have taken her classes, alongside civilians who have become addicted to the yoga’s powerful positive effects on physical and psychic well-being. (Some gurus say that because the practice lifts the “Kundalini energy”—imagined as a snake coiled near the small of the back—up the spine, it also increases your sex drive.) Gurmukh was born Mary Mae Gibson, in 1942. She became a student of the late Yogi Bhajan, America’s guru of Kundalini, who told her, “You are to deliver babies.” She assisted at births, then began to adapt Kundalini for pregnant women. “My destiny wasn’t to deliver the physical baby but to deliver the mother,” she has said. These mothers flock to her classes and made her 2000 book, The Eight Human Talents, a best-seller.

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

Dharma MittraThe teacher’s teacher.

Dharma Mittra, 68, a practitioner of the classical Ashtanga, or “eight-limbed yoga,” is known as the elder statesman of yoga in America. His own series of poses is called Shiva Namaskar Vinyasa and is a five-level practice of poses that, in addition to its physical benefits, focuses on the goal of self-realization. “Everything is an act of adoration to the Lord,” says Dharma, who is often referred to as the “teacher’s teacher.” Born in central Brazil, Dharma first studied yoga from books that he borrowed from his younger brother in the 1950s. As a boy, being raised Catholic, he was fascinated by the concepts of Karma and reincarnation and wanted to know what would happen if he died. In a Manhattan ashram in 1964, Dharma began studies with Swami Kailashananda, known as Yogi Gupta, who became his guru. In 1974, Dharma opened the Dharma Yoga Center in Manhattan, and in 1983 he started work on a now famous poster of the 908 asanas, which today hangs in ashrams, studios, and gyms around the world. The contortionist in the poster is Dharma himself. He took inventory of all the poses known at the time, then mounted a camera in his studio, and in one month shot photos of himself in 908 different asanas. There are 100,000 posters in print today.

Christy TurlingtonThe model yogini.

It took a confluence of genetic miracles to produce Christy Turlington’s singular, astonishing beauty. But her spiritual awakening—and the strength it has given her to withstand pain, pressure, and loss as she has navigated a high-powered modeling career and built a successful business (Nuala, a line of yoga-inspired activewear she produces in partnership with Puma)—she owes to yoga. Discovered while horseback riding at the tender age of 14, Turlington took her first Kundalini class four years later and was hooked. Deepening her quest led her into the lecture halls of New York University, where she majored in religion and philosophy. In 1997 her beloved father died of lung cancer, and Turlington became an avid spokeswoman against smoking, while celebrating—as she wrote in her book, Living Yoga—“the miracle of breath.” Now married to actor-director Ed Burns, she is the mother of two young children, Grace and Finn, and surely needs a deep breath or two to make it through her busy days. Her commitment to an active life on the mat continues to inspire those of us still wildly in thrall to her grace and her stamina and, yes, inner beauty be damned, her perfect yoga butt.

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

Rodney Yee and Colleen SaidmanThe video stars.

They are the perfect poster couple for modern yoga: Yee, an ex-dancer with the Oakland Ballet and leading face of the best-selling Gaiam yoga videos that fill the shelves of your local Wal-Mart, and Saidman, a former model and student of Yee’s who co-founded and runs the popular Yoga Shanti studio, in Sag Harbor, New York. It’s an incredible success story (the prolific Yee, who has produced around 30 videos, is perhaps yoga’s most recognizable figure), but not without its elements of negativity: When Yee, dubbed the “stud-muffin guru” by Time magazine, hooked up with Saidman and both of them left their spouses of more than 20 years, he took a drubbing in the press for crossing the teacher-student line. Now, several years later, however, with both their careers thriving, the two seem to have achieved a blissful degree of balance, even serenity.

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

TKV DesikacharGuru, holistic yoga.

If yoga were to have a family dynasty—its own version of the Nehrus—it would be here, with the line formed by T. Krishnamacharya, his son TKV Desikachar, and his grandson, Kausthub Desikachar. In fact, it all flows from Krishnamacharya (shown on opposite page), who revived the ancient art in the early 20th century and spread the word through his disciples (who form three of the four main pillars of modern yoga): his son TKV (holistic yoga), his brother-in-law B. K. S. Iyengar (Iyengar yoga), and Sri K. Pattabhi Jois (Ashtanga yoga). Krishnamacharya’s path was pure old-school: after studying Sanskrit and yoga philosophy at university, and practicing with a guru in the Tibetan Himalayas, he stumped across India in the days of the British Raj, lecturing and wowing audiences. TKV, meanwhile, though based in Madras (Chennai), is largely credited with bringing the complete tradition of his father’s teachings, especially in the area of yoga therapy, to the West. “Today, we’re lucky. Everybody knows about yoga, and we can just jump on the bandwagon,”said Kausthub, himself heir to the tradition and author of The Yoga of the Yogi: The Legacy of T. Krishnamacharya. “My grandfather had to create the bandwagon.”

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

Pujya SwamijiHost, International Yoga Festival at Rishikesh

When the Beatles made their famous 1968 journey to Rishikesh, India, they were following a well-worn, if little-known, trail of seekers, sages, and spiritual pilgrims. Today, this “city of the divine” nestled in the Himalayas has only grown in significance among yoga devotees around the world. Thanks largely to H. H. Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji (“Pujya Swamiji”), Rishikesh has become a mecca of sorts as host to the International Yoga Festival, based at his ashram, Parmath Niketan, since 1999. Pujya Swamiji—who’s been named “Man of the Year” in India numerous times and whose honors include the Mahatma Gandhi Humanitarian Award—is also the founder and chairman of the India Heritage Research Foundation, which helps run charitable schools, clinics, orphanages, and large-scale-disaster-relief services throughout India (not to mention its eco-oriented “Clean, Green, and Serene” programs). To top it off, Pujya Swamiji and the foundation are now assembling the first comprehensive encyclopedia of Hinduism, a monumental task that will take all the patience and focus of a yogi master.

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

Trudie Styler and StingThe Tantric twosome.

When he was in his 20s, a questionable sartorial choice—a black-and-yellow striped sweater—gave him a nickname that would stick and soar with him as his unearthly talent and charisma catapulted him into a life of almost incalculable success—fame, fortune, multiple homes around the world, so many platinum records, Grammys, and other awards that we won’t bother to do the math. Plus, even in his mid-50s, Sting is still as cut as he was when he wrote “Roxanne”; credit yoga for help on that front. An actress, a film producer (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, among others), a cookbook writer (Cooking from Lake House Organic Farm), and a purveyor of organic olive oil and honey that sell at Harrods, Styler is no slouch herself. Together they created the Rainforest Foundation, in 1989. They’ve been married nearly 15 years. Yoga’s helped on that front, too—the Tantric part. They are famously, fabulously into each other. They began practicing in 1990, at a time when he could not reach his fingers past his toes in a forward bend, “nor,” he wrote in the foreword of Sharon Gannon and David Life’s book, Jivamukti Yoga, “could I complete a simple sun salutation without huffing and puffing like an old train.” Since 2005, they’ve opened Il Palagio, their sumptuous villa in Tuscany, for yoga retreats—who says a Downward Dog doesn’t mix with a good Sangiovese?

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

Ali MacGraw and Erich SchiffmannStudent and teacher.

Perhaps no American celebrity played a bigger part in yoga’s crossover here than Ali MacGraw, star of Love Story and 70s fashion icon, whose full recovery from busted marriages (Robert Evans, Steve McQueen), heavy drinking, and even a fire that destroyed her Malibu home was made possible, in large part, by the practice of yoga. MacGraw’s groundbreaking 1994 video, Yoga Mind & Body, helped make yoga a household term (one paper called her “the Jane Fonda of the meditative set”), while the 2003 documentary The Fire of Yoga, which she narrates, remains one of the most moving portraits of yoga’s therapeutic effects. Schiffmann, who led MacGraw through her workout in *Yoga Mind & Body,*in the White Sands desert of New Mexico, took his own road-less-traveled to enlightenment—from L.A. surfer dude/artist to student of B. K. S. Iyengar, TKV Desikachar, and the famed Indian philosopher Krishnamurti. Author of the best-selling Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness, Schiffmann developed his own, unique brand of yoga, a contemplative mix of exercise and mental discipline that has made his studio, in Venice, California, the latest refuge for a new, healthier generation of Hollywood starlets.

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

Donna KaranThe yogini’s yogini.

“The body and movement have always been part of who I am,” says Karan. That’s pretty clear to the thousands of real women with real bodies who’ve been eagerly buying her sophisticated collections year after sexy-yet-practical year. You’d think that since selling her company to LVMH for more than $600 million, in 2001, Karan would have more time on her hands, but she hasn’t stopped designing. And multiple businesses, daughter, and grandchildren notwithstanding, she has made a spiritual life a priority; a yogi for 30 years, she’s never hung up her yoga mat. “Yoga is a key access to my mind, body, and soul,” Karan explains. “It allows me the ability to look at a bigger picture—one of sharing, giving, and making a difference in the world.”

Photograph by Michael O'Neill.

Sri K. Pattabhi JoisGuru, Ashtanga yoga.

Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, 91, has been described as “fierce and compassionate” and “strict and loving” by his students, but it’s this kind of dichotomy that makes the teacher of Ashtanga so revered. Jois, who has been teaching for 70 years, started with a studio, or shala, in Mysore (Mysooru), India, that held only 15 students, and is now used to teaching groups that can number in the hundreds. He leads his students through a series of asanas that flow one into the next, synchronizing with the breath, and getting gradually more difficult, with the goal of producing an intense internal heat that detoxifies the body. If you get stuck on a pose, you are required to practice it to perfection before you can proceed to the next one. (The only person on Earth certified by Jois to do the most advanced series is his grandson, Sharath.) With its kick-ass regime of pretzel positions, this is the yoga that makes you say to yourself, “There is no way ... ” If you’ve signed up for a power-yoga class at the gym, it’s most certainly some variant of Ashtanga. The orthodox Ashtanga method taught by Jois requires pre-dawn wake-up calls and a daily devotion to the practice, in an effort to advance through the six series of asanas and re-unite with your true inner nature. Even the most strict observers of Ashtanga struggle to make it through the second, or intermediate, of the six series. In the 2003 documentary Ashtanga, NY, Gwyneth Paltrow said, “I’ve been practicing second series for probably two years, but I still have like five poses left.”